Look, I have a homepage. I wanted a site that pulls together my various social media stuff as well as a record of my other writing and speaking engagements.

Top twelve picks

“Dead world at sunset.” I’m not going to spoil the topic but just read this, okay? This is beautiful, lyrical and amazingly tight writing, of the kind that makes me want to be a better writer. Hats off to Jessa Gamble. My favourite thing in a week of top stuff.

“Forming, finding or defending a vacuum-sealed echo-chamber online is extremely difficult, if at all possible.” Bora Zivkovic destroys the “internet is an echo chamber” meme

“The mere existence of whales suggests that is possible to suppress cancer many-fold better than is done in humans.” Carl Zimmer on Peto’s Paradox

“Followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Churches believe they should maintain a home for all of God’s creatures around their places of worship. The result? Forests ringing churches.” An amazing post by Delene Beeland on the “church forests” of Ethiopia

No one puts baby in a cohort! Mark Henderson on a new study that’s recruiting 100,000 UK babies (paywall). Meanwhile, Helen Pearson writes about the “study of a lifetime” – a group of thousands of Brits whose health has been tracked since 1946.

Lab to red carpet: an NYT piece on famous actors with science backgrounds, including Natalie Portman (here she is on Pubmed – she’s the fifth author). And from Wikipedia: “Due to her sci pubs, Portman is among small number of actors w/ a finite Erdos-Bacon number”

Oscar science: based on movie-star faces, we now prefer younger, more feminine women… and men

“Comment Is Free… sometimes what they publish is worth every penny of that.” ZING! Language Log destroys a piece which claims that languages with good spelling systems have no word for dyslexia.

“The success of MORDOR will open up the majority of the bone specimens previously not available for sampling”

Arnie, in calling for fossil fuel termination, quotes Conan: “Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.”

Blogging/journalism/internet/society

Gladwell, proven spectacularly wrong on social media, dismisses critics as pajama-wearing bloggers in Brooklyn. Really, Malcolm? You are critiquing us on sartorial grounds?

And the misleading headline of the week goes to the Independent. Based on this, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker says “Many Brit outlets do seem markedly fond of starting readers off with caution- and irony-free hyperbole, and then as a story proceeds titrating its consumers back to reality.” Great. Just great. England f**king expects, okay?

The Battle for Control – what people who worry about the internet are really worried about

Comments (11)

When I first tried the link it didn’t work. I had just written my incredibly funny comment when I — far out of character — decided to try again before posting — and saw Ed on a podium. I naturally thought someone had fixed something. But now, a few hours later, I came back to read it, and it won’t work.

Some nice reads as usual – though nothing , this week, that I feel inclined to pinch for my own blog or Twitter stream.

The “manning up” article produces the strongest emotional reaction. Whether or not the writer is accurate in his attribution of motives, my gut feeling (accompanied by much boiling of blood) – is that any man who feels his pride is threatened by the successes of women deserves to be punished for failing to get over his pathetic little hang-up, deserves to feel like a complete and utter failure as a human being.

Which is probably an overreaction that the calm, rational side of my personality should keep in check, but that’s the way it takes me.

(There are some complete idiots in the comments on that article, too.)

You can get the flesh eating beetle from a British supplier too, if you should so fancy. They’re a bit grim though and are pretty good at escaping from their tanks. I’d like to apologize now to everyone who had to share my lab space…